


stone strong

by el_vip



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Gen, It's Not Great, i just got seized by the urge, might add to it later, sort of a character piece
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:00:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22747462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/el_vip/pseuds/el_vip
Summary: Toph Beifong was born blind.Toph Beifong was born too small and she was born two months too early.She was born weak and fragile and helpless.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 30





	stone strong

**Author's Note:**

> so! this is some weirdly disjointed nonsense but i've rewatched the entire series recently and just got consumed with the need to do this, so ta dah. i'll probably be tacking another chapter on later to go further into different points in time, but this is it for now

Toph Beifong was born blind. 

Toph Beifong was born too small and she was born two months too early.

She was born weak and fragile and helpless.

According to her father, her mother, the maids and servants in their home, and thus the rest of the world, Toph Beifong was never born at all. 

  
  


\---

  
  


Toph Beifong was born with earth in her soul, stone in her bones, dust in her skin. 

She spends her years as a child feeling it, but never quite touching it, not until she runs away from the crushing force of her parents, from the way they squeeze at the rock inside her, trying to shape it into its smallest form. 

But she’s taught to reach it by those who first did and it’s the pivotal point that makes it too late for her parents’ influence to stay its hold over her. 

The earth is part of her and now she is part of it. 

  
  


\---

  
  


Toph Beifong was born a fighter. 

Her body had been like fine porcelain, a burden on her and her parents when she was a child. The midwife had thought she wouldn’t make it. But she held on, and she made it. She’s still holding on. 

It makes natural sense for her to fight for real, which is why she creates her own persona and the skills she’s developed alone, away from the rest of the world and her repressive family. She wins fight after fight and claims a champion title. 

She spends the time she is unwatched practising offensive movements, listening to the earth as it whispers to her and tells her how to move, how to win. 

She wins every time. 

  
  


\---

  
  


Toph Beifong was born anarchic.

She doesn’t know why her parents expect any different after how they’ve treated her. They hid her away from the world and restricted her freedom - they should have realised she’d want to leave eventually. 

It’s a shock - maybe even to her - that it’s of her own free will. That it’s to follow the Avatar to the ends of the world and to teach him how to bend the ground beneath them. 

It is not a shock to her that she joins rebel groups and alliances, ends up storming the Fire Nation Palace and tearing through the world in an uprising for the ages, right under all their noses. 

She never thinks they won’t win, even when they lose. 

  
  


\---

  
  


Toph Beifong was born strong. 

They wouldn’t win without any of them, she knows. And that means they wouldn’t win without her too. She doesn’t need them to tell her that, but it’s nice to know. 

She’s the best earthbender in the world. She invented metalbending. She took down the Fire Lord’s ships - 

_ She was weak and blind and helpless again, dangling from the edge of an airship, into the nothing, into the darkness, with only fingers under her hand and no vibrations and no sight and no feeling and no way to do anything but cry because they thought it was over. _

_ And sometimes she remembers it, the feeling of fragility in their fingers as they held onto each other, ready to drop and die to save the world and the feeling of absolute nothing surrounding her, her strength lost to the wind.  _

But the ground is solid beneath her now. She helped end the war. And that’s all that matters.

  
  


\---

  
  


Toph Beifong was not born forgiving. She was not born with or taught the willingness to forget. 

But she does it anyway, when she comes back to her parents at the end of it all. 

She bows to her mother when she finds her new home. She saves her father’s life and takes her place within his business. 

According to her parents, Toph Beifong was born blind. 

She was born too small and she was born two months too early.

But she was born strong and solid and powerful.


End file.
